A Study Of Outsiders’ Survival Strategies In Middlemarch From The Perspective Of Field Theory

George Eliot(1819-1880)is a learned Victorian writer in Britain whose works are well known for their profound philosophical thought,delicate psychological analysis of characters,and keen attention to ethics,religion,and politics.Her most famous masterpiece,Middlemarch(1872),attracts widespread attention upon its publication.The novel presents a detailed picture of the local’s life practices in the central England on the eve of the 1832 Reform Bill,in which the image of the outsiders is vivid but has been left on the margins of critical discourse.Based on the novel,this research takes the field theory from the famous French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu as the starting point,combined with the concepts of "field" and "capital",and systematically analyzes the survival strategies practiced by three typical outsiders—Bulstrode,Lydgate and Will.It has been found that outsiders break through the barrier of blood ties though marriage,or promote community reform with relatively well economic and cultural capital,so as to establish their own status in the field.However,the traditional core values of Middlemarch were eventually maintained,and the invasions of outsiders all ended in failure.On the one hand,the failure reflects their personal limitations as the "other" of the community,and due to their own immoral factors and lack of fellow feeling,they do not establish deep connections with the community in the field;on the other hand,the exclusion and discrimination against others also expose the shortcomings of the community itself as rigid and closed.Community’s confrontation of heterogeneous forces reflects the inability to resolve its own contradictions.Meanwhile,the emotional anxieties of Eliot as a Victorian novelist further reflect in the exclusion of outsiders.The over exploitation of reason in the mechanical age leads to the moral imbalance and the emergence of sick personalities.Eliot comes to realize that social cohesion and progress require not only individual responsibility to others,but also the support of fellow feelings as a stronger bond.In a sense,the failure of the survival strategies is the result of the excessive suppression of rational thinking on human emotional experience,and the creation of the novel represents a way for Eliot to resist such a mechanism.